


you'll have your rhythm back any day now

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Series: i wish we had more time (ws!steve trevor) [2]
Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Winter Soldier AU, cw mentions of vomiting, diana has strong feelings about pottery, pottery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-11 11:30:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11147508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: “Steve Trevor,” he says, as Bodhi clasps his hand and gives it a quick shake before his hand drops back to his side. “I’m Ms. Prince’s new secretary.”“Really?” says Bodhi. “She didn’t say.”or: Steve Trevor, adapting. (alternatively: how Wonder Woman got herself a secretary who could kill somebody with a clipboard.)





	you'll have your rhythm back any day now

**Author's Note:**

> title is still from Mindy Nettifee's "The First Time".
> 
> I don't know how this thing became bigger than a oneshot.

The pre-med student comes back on a Sunday evening. By that time, Steve’s slept through a whole night on the couch, after he and Diana traded stories—or, well, she told him about Sameer and Chief and Charlie, while he told her a story he half-remembers hearing from one of his handlers, a man who collected folklore as a hobby and sometimes told it to the weapon he was taking care of.

It isn’t really a fair trade, but lots of things about their situation aren’t fair. Steve knows there’s a history between the two of them, can see it in the way she looks at him like she’s still not sure he’s really _there_ , can feel it in how she holds him, sometimes, like she’s scared he might slip through her fingers once more.

He could, is the thing. But he doesn’t want to.

He’s reading when the pre-med comes in, and looks up when she walks in through the door. “Oh, hey, Diana, you’re early,” he says, but the woman that comes in is not Diana.

“Um,” she says. “I’m? Not Diana?”

Obviously she isn’t. Her skin is brown, the color of oak, and her rumpled clothes and general demeanour lack Diana’s refined elegance. Her hair is just as dark as Diana’s, but it’s rapidly escaping from the bun at the top of her head.

“Um,” says Steve. “I. Should probably go?”

The girl stares at him for a second, then she says, “She texted me about you yesterday—you’re her friend who needed a place to stay.” Which is true. “Shit, man, what happened?”

 _I’m a formerly brainwashed assassin who’s on the run from the people who brainwashed him in the first place, and I’m over a century old but my memory stretches back to about four months ago, hi,_ springs to mind. Seeing as this woman is a stranger and he doesn’t know how much she knows about Diana, he just says, “I’m broke.”

It’s true. He is broke.

“Yeah, same,” says the girl. “Is she still on her trip?”

“She got back a day or two ago,” he says. “I think she’s just wrapping something up at the museum right now.”

“Oh, damn,” says the girl. “I was hoping to use her coffeemaker, mine broke like a week ago and I haven’t gotten it fixed yet.”

“I’m pretty good at coffee,” he says. He’s not actually sure if he is, but he’s got a feeling he needs to get on this girl’s good side. “I can make you some right now.”

Sure enough, her face lights up at the prospect of having somebody make her coffee for her. “Yes, please,” she says.

\--

“So what’s your name, stranger?”

Steve runs his teeth over his lip. No one had ever really asked him that, before. Diana knows him already, so he hadn’t had to tell her. This girl, though—

“Steve,” he says, then, like a flash of lightning: “Trevor. Steve Trevor.”

“Weird,” says the girl. “I have a great-uncle who’s got your name.” She shrugs, says, “He died in World War I, though, so I don’t really know him all that well. Just in stories my dad got off my grandma before she died.”

“So what’s your name?” Steve asks her, somehow managing to keep himself from falling apart on this girl.

She shrugs, takes a sip of her coffee. “Claire Trevor,” she says.

“Oh,” says Steve, staring at his great-niece, who looks no older than he is. In fact he’s pretty sure he probably looks younger than her, she looks more tired than someone in pre-med has any right to be. “What kinda stories did your dad tell you about your great-uncle?”

Claire looks back at him, nose wrinkling up in confusion. “Are you some kind of World War I buff?” she asks. “Just—stories, I guess. Stuff about when my gran was a kid, letters from the front during the war, things like that.”

“Something like that,” says Steve. He feels a little terrible about lying to this girl who’s his own blood, but he doesn’t think she’d take the news all that well. “I’m very interested in World War I.”

“Uh-huh,” says Claire. “All right, name a plane used in World War I.”

“DH.2, on the British side,” Steve says, the words coming almost effortlessly. Internally, he marvels at what information has managed to stick—he might not be able to remember shit about where he’s from or who he is, but somehow he can talk about World War I aviation just fine. “It countered the Germans’ Fokker Scourge, which was a _bitch_ to deal with—”

“All right, all right,” says Claire, holding up a hand to stop him before he can really get going. “Jesus, man, you’ve made your point.”

Steve breathes a sigh of relief, takes a sip of coffee. “Could you tell me one of those stories?” he asks.

“I guess,” says Claire, with a shrug. “Hey. How did you and Diana meet?”

And that’s—a pretty good question. He doesn’t know either, but he half-remembers drowning, the silhouette of a woman against the water, sunlight making a halo around her raven hair. “She saved my ass,” he says. “How’d you two meet?”

“Craigslist,” says Claire.

“Who’s Craig?” says Steve.

“I have no goddamn clue,” says Claire, raising an eyebrow. “It’s a website. You put up personal ads and shit, ask for help with something. I put up this ad about needing a place to stay while I looked for an apartment, and Diana answered.” She shrugs, says, “We’ve been friends since. Or as friendly as you can get with someone whose apartment you occasionally sleep in when she’s out.”

“This site,” says Steve, slowly, “could you use it to ask for help with getting someone off your back?”

“I guess, but don’t expect great results,” says Claire. “I got two trolls on my ad and the other candidate besides Diana was a frat bro who leered at me when we met up, so.”

“A what?”

“Some guy in a fraternity,” Claire clarifies, eyeing him oddly. “Anyway, I met up with Diana, we worked out a deal, and here I am.” She gestures to him with her cup, and says, “What kind of trouble are you in?”

“The very bad kind,” says Steve, evasively.

“I’m not getting anything else besides that, am I?” says Claire, frowning at him.

Steve huffs out a breath, nods. “It’s probably for the best I don’t say more than that,” he says, just as the door creaks open again.

Diana calls, “I’m back!”

“Diana!” shouts Claire, moving to the doorway. “Hey, I got your friend to make me some coffee, my coffeemaker broke.”

“I offered,” says Steve, as Diana steps through the doorway, hair done up in an elegant bun, dressed in blue. His gaze lingers just a little too long on her before he looks away, feeling heat rush to his cheeks. “If you want I can make another cup.”

“That would be nice, yes,” says Diana. “How are your parents, Claire?”

“Same as ever,” says Claire, as Steve pulls out an extra mug and starts the process over again, listening in to their conversation. “Dad got a new car and Mama’s the new head of the homeowners’ association where they are, but other than that nothing’s changed.”

“Good for them,” says Diana. “Though, didn’t you say your mother hated the association?”

“She hated the old head, not the whole thing itself. Anyway, they started sorting through stuff in the attic lately, too, so there’s that.”

Steve looks down at the cup and thinks, _A hundred years._ His sister is dead, his nephew is grown and old, and his great-niece is here, and it isn’t fair. It isn’t _fair_ , that he never got to see any of that, just one horror after the other instead.

He breathes out. “Could you send me some of that stuff?” he asks, turning to look at Claire. He thinks—yes, he recognizes her smile. If he digs down deep he can almost _remember_ —

“Oh, sure, I guess,” says Claire, with a shrug. “You didn’t tell me your friend was a World War I buff.”

“A mistake he seems to have corrected,” says Diana, glancing at Steve. “What was your field of expertise again?”

“Aviation,” says Steve. “What can I say? I’ve always liked flying.”

\--

“She’s—nice.”

“She’s a very accomplished student, and I don’t doubt that she will be a similarly accomplished doctor.”

“Yeah, I know, I just—”

He breathes out. He’d climbed out on the fire escape and onto the roof after Claire had left, watched her for as long as he could before she left his line of sight. He knows he could probably track her across Paris. He _has_ tracked her across Paris.

“I wish I could’ve met her earlier,” he says. “I missed out on so much.”

Diana sits down next to him, and says, “She’s so much like you.”

“She’s much nicer,” says Steve. “Smart, too—she almost cottoned on to me.” A little like her grandmother, and if he closes his eyes he could almost remember his sister’s grin. “I only managed to get her to believe me when I started talking about planes.”

“You were a pilot,” says Diana. “That was how we met—you crashed into the sea off the coast of Themyscira and I dragged you out.”

“Themy-what?”

“Paradise Island,” says Diana, gently amused and nudging his side. “As you so eloquently put it.”

“It sounds like paradise,” says Steve. “Sweetbreads and honeyed tea, you said?”

“It made up for the brutal training,” says Diana. “And I think she seems to like the bread part, if not the tea.”

“Yeah, tea takes some getting used to,” says Steve. “I—don’t know how, but I can tell you the specs for a fighter plane in World War I but I can’t _remember_ how I know it, I just do.”

Diana breathes out, and says, “Memory can be fallible. Sometimes you remember something completely insignificant in perfect detail, but something important fades with time.”

“Or electrical shocks,” Steve murmurs, to himself.

Diana turns to look at him and says, “What?”

\--

(An interlude:

Bruce is suiting up for the night when the e-mail comes in. The subject line reads, _medical torture recovery_ , which is concerning coming from Diana’s address.

He’s even more concerned when he reads the e-mail, but writes out the information she needs anyway. Then he pulls up the surveillance camera photos from France, and squints at the man in the photos.

 _What are you getting yourself into?_ he types, finishing off the e-mail before he hits send.

 _Not something more than I can handle,_ Diana sends back.

Bruce sighs.)

\--

Diana takes him to a restaurant near her museum the next day, clearly hell-bent on showing him what he missed out on over the century that he barely remembers. She takes his hand and it’s.

Well, it’s _a lot_ , okay.

What’s also a lot is the menu that he finds himself looking at. Some small part of him dies a little inside when he spies the prices listed beside the items, and another goes when he sees just how many items there are.

“What’s a,” Steve starts, then squints at the item before he says, “ _bibimbap?_ Whatever that is.”

“It’s a rice dish,” says Diana. “Originally it’s from Korea, but it’s become popular all over the world in the past few years.”

He squints at the accompanying picture. He can barely see the rice under the vegetables and meats and the single fried egg on top of it. But, hey, when in Rome.

“I’ll have it,” he says. “Can’t be that bad.”

\--

So it turns out that Steve’s stomach is fucked up enough from repeated freezing and unfreezing over a century that he can’t actually handle preservatives at the moment, or foods richer than the little pastries Diana keeps in her fridge and instant coffee, or—horror of horrors—chocolate.

Steve’s going to punch someone just for that one alone. He tells Diana this as they stumble out of a place that sells kale shakes, with Steve sipping morosely from a plastic cup full of something utterly tasteless.

“That is truly horrifying,” says Diana.

“I _know_ ,” says Steve.

“I’ll hold them in place so you can punch them,” she says.

“You’re an angel,” he says, absently, and she stops in her tracks for a moment, surprise flashing across her face. It catches him off-guard, and he turns and asks, “Are you okay?”

Diana blinks at him and smiles. “I’m fine,” she assures him. “How do you feel about artwork?”

(There’d been a painting once, in an opulent mansion, depicting two lovers kissing underneath the moonlight. It’d been a beautiful scene, up until he pulled the trigger and red blood splattered across—)

“I’m not a big fan,” he says.

“Perhaps I can change your mind,” says Diana, thoughtful.

\--

“They’re pots,” says Steve.

Diana raises a brow.

“They’re good-looking pots!” says Steve, holding his hands up. The remains of his kale shake are currently in a trash can somewhere in the Louvre, and thank god. “I think one of them’s a little chipped, though.”

“Yes, their condition is deplorable,” she says. They’re currently in the museum where she works, sorting out pots and artifacts, and he’s helping her unpack some new acquisitions. “The village they were in did not keep them very well-hidden, and so they’ve suffered some damage over time.” She waves a hand at an empty pedestal. “The smallest one goes there.”

He picks up the smallest clay pot, marvels a little at the work that must’ve gone into it. He sets it gently on the pedestal.

“So why pots?” he asks, curiously. “And, uh, why these pots in particular?”

“Pottery is important,” says Diana, in the tone of someone who has gone over this argument before and will not budge an inch. “And these pots are from the Minoan civilization. They’re long since gone, and they’ve taken much of their stories with them—these artifacts give us a clue into how their art evolved, and what their tastes were like.” Her voice slips into something reverent as she speaks, and Steve finds himself enthralled, sitting down next to her and listening to her talk about the importance of pottery, and jugs, and vases shaped like bulls’ heads.

“This is a Marine jug,” she says, pointing at the clay jug. The design on it is faded, but Steve can just about make out dolphins, and seaweed. “This was the last purely Minoan style—their palaces, towns, villages were all destroyed, save for Knossos. The Mycenaean Greeks established themselves in Knossos afterwards.”

“The what?”

“The Mycenaean Greeks,” Diana explains. “They were the precursors to Ancient Greek civilization as we’ve seen it, and much of the literature in Ancient Greece would be set in their time, such as the Trojan epic cycle.” She lifts up the heavy jug, places it gently on another pedestal to best display the parts of it that aren’t as damaged. “They continued the Minoans’ traditions, but they had a profound influence upon the style.”

“And you can tell by the pottery?” says Steve, leaning back.

“They have very distinctive marks,” says Diana, inspecting the jug critically.

“What marks?” says Steve.

Diana practically lights up at the question, and Steve thinks he’s never seen a more beautiful woman before in his life.

\--

Diana goes to a meeting after they’ve finished with the pots, leaving Steve in her office.

He very carefully does not look at the weapons behind him. He knows for a fact that he could easily take one and wield it, but he’s not too sure about the conditions they’re in and besides, he’s really liking it here.

He picks up a book on lost writing systems and reads a chapter at random, just for something to look at that’s not the arsenal behind him. He’s halfway through the chapter when a young man timidly opens the door, dark hair tied back in a ponytail, and says, “Um. Hello?”

Steve glances up. “Hey,” he says. “Uh, are you lost?”

“Oh, no,” says the man. Can’t be more than twenty, at a glance, and some part of Steve idly thinks—he wouldn’t _need_ a weapon, all he has to do is rip out that earring to stun him, take that clipboard from his hands and— _no._ “I, uh, this is Ms. Prince’s office, right? I’m Bodhi, I’m an intern in Islamic Arts, Mr. Shalhoub sent me here to ask for her expert advice in handling some of the newer acquisitions we just got in.”

“Yes, this is Di— _Ms. Prince’s_ office,” says Steve, putting his book down. “She’s at a meeting right now, though, so, um. Just. Leave a message here with me and I’ll let her know.”

“That was the message,” says Bodhi. Nervous kid. How long has he been interning, he wonders. “Um, yeah, okay, but—who are you? I haven’t seen you around before.”

He stands, flashes a smile at Bodhi, and holds out his hand for him to shake. “Steve Trevor,” he says, as Bodhi clasps his hand and gives it a quick shake before his hand drops back to his side. “I’m Ms. Prince’s new secretary.”

“Really?” says Bodhi. “She didn’t say.”

“I’m very new,” says Steve. “And also very good.”

“Okay,” says Bodhi. He pauses a second, then adds, “She’s a very good boss. But, um, a little. Terrifying, sometimes.”

“Really,” says Steve, who once saw Diana walk across no man’s land by herself, deflecting bullets and a mortar shell. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I have a friend who used to work under her and she says nothing is scarier than having her disappointed in you,” Bodhi continues, rambling now.

True. Steve doesn’t want to let her down, when she has placed so much trust in him despite everything he’s done. “I’ll try not to,” he says, projecting a confidence he doesn’t actually feel. “Shouldn’t you be going by now?”

Bodhi goes.

Diana comes back about two minutes later and says, “I would much rather fight a Gorgon than deal with Joe from Corporate _one more time_.”

“That’s a lady with snake hair, right?” says Steve, looking up from the book. “Who’s Joe? Also a kid came in here saying something about Islamic Arts needing your help.”

“A very small-minded and greedy man,” says Diana, sitting across from him. “What did you tell this kid?”

“You were in a meeting and I was your new secretary,” says Steve, setting his book aside.

Their gazes meet, and Steve half-remembers something through the haze that’s fallen over his past, _she’s a very good secretary_ —

She breaks out laughing, first, startling him into a fit of giggles as well. It takes them a minute or two or five to quit laughing for long enough to recover their wits and their breaths.

“You’re a very good one,” says Diana, breathless.

Steve chokes on a laugh, and says, “Yeah, I’m great at taking notes,” and it sets the both of them off laughing again.

It feels weirdly good. It makes his sides ache, sure, and he can hardly breathe from laughing so much, but he hasn’t laughed this hard since—well, he doesn’t remember. And Diana’s laugh is maybe the sweetest music in the whole world, bar none.

He wouldn’t mind, he thinks, getting her to laugh again like that. He wouldn’t mind if that becomes his next mission.

She smiles at him, and it’s like the sunlight is shining on him at last.


End file.
